Wheeling Gull Isle have you come here to play jesus

She did not realize how different the Island would be from the Valley.  

There was the obvious, of course.  Wheeling Gull Island had things that Bearclaw could never dream of by nature — shimmering sands and waves limned with sunlight, the potent stench of salt.

But what she did not realize is how much she would miss it.  She missed her boulder, where she could guard the entire valley by herself.  She missed tracking the narrow border with the rise of each sun.  There was not much else she missed, but these things were enough to keep the woman dissatisfied during her first days at Undersea.

The wolves seemed nice, for the most part.  So far, there was no Indra here; she had not unwittingly made any enemies.  But she feared for it.  She had kept her distance from @Coelacanth's snowbear, for she had not detected the woman's estrus and understood the posessiveness she had for him.

She left Yakone safe and sound asleep and headed out, destined to find somewhere for comfort.

Coelacanth was a lot of things, but a good patient wasn’t one of them. The pain in her shoulder and cervical spine wasn’t getting any better, and idiotically, she wondered why — but really, it was wholly and utterly her own fault. She was so focused on bustling around, keeping busy so she would not have to face her fear of exchanging words with Komodo again, that she neglected to rest and recuperate. It was more her style to work until she dropped — so, she worked. She patrolled, she fished [read: poorly], and she tended to her patients instead of herself.

A whole afternoon of fishing had yielded only five successful catches; she nudged four into one of the caches further inland, where the snowmelt from Skybowl and the shelter of trees kept the atmosphere cool and fresh. The fifth fish [try saying that five times fast!] was clasped gently betwixt her jaws as she sought out the winter raven and her pale snowchild — but the small girl was sleeping alone, safe and sound, so Seelie tracked her mother’s fresh trail with keen alacrity.

She was limping by the time she caught up with the sleek, streamlined tauhou, but her Neptune eyes were bright, and her feathered tail flagged amicably behind her. Unless the situation necessitated it, Coelacanth was not an overtly dominant female, so she approached the woman with a slightly subdued wriggle of her hips and hesitantly stretched her forequarters in a playful half-bow. The frail movement pained her, though, so she satisfied herself with a little whuff that puffed her cheeks around the fish and tossed it forward. Even this movement was drawn up slightly short due to the spasming of her trapezius and rhomboideus muscles, and she smiled a bit sheepishly.

A soft whine fluttered from her lips as she espied the other female’s somber disposition, but she preferred not to approach so soon after offering food. She didn’t want to send mixed signals by tossing the woman a meal and then encroaching upon her personal space, so she haltingly stretched out in the sand with her hips kicked out to the right and her front as straight as an Anubis sphinx. “Safe,” she whispered softly, turning to the sandstone-and-obsidian female and crinkling her eyes in a smile before blinking slowly and looking out across the sea. “Eat now,” she suggested mildly.

Reigi found nowhere like her boulder back home.  Pent up with frustration she had kicked one paw into the ground, sand sailing through the air.  By the time Coelacanth found her way to the raven, her foul mood had dissipated into something more brooding but also more agreeable.

She regarded the fish with a cautious eye, but something about the inkdog (and her prickly brown lamb) made Reigi feel comfortable and welcome.  She was not yet hungry, but she would bring it back to share with @Maegi and @Yakone later.

Thaaannyu, she said hesitantly.  It was the only feeling she could offer right now.  She moved closer to the inkdog and if she was allowed, she'd touch her nose to the Aralez's forehead.  Safe.

The raven would lay as close as Coelacanth would physically allow, also gazing at the magnificent ocean (albeit with more fear than her silken-furred companion).

The little Groenendael was disappointed, but not quite offended, that the raven did not want to eat her gift. She was mollified by Reigi’s tremulous approach, her gentle mien and affable body language bespeaking overt invitation: feathered plume swayed behind her as she stretched her willowy forelimbs and wriggled her toes. She nodded when the flighty creature repeated her vow, replying in a whisper that could almost be called tuneful for its fluting cadence, “Peace be, `Io.” She named her for the royal hawks that Kirynnae had ofttimes spoken of, wondering if in turn she would be given a name that was unique to the winter shadow. She thought she knew what Reigi was going through — having a truename that no wolf knew. It never occurred to her that the tawny-and-black female had never been given one in the first place. What they truly shared was a rare understanding of how precious names and nicknames were. In naming `Io, Seelie hoped to keep her.

Coelacanth had no such reservations when it came to physical contact. Had she not nursed the female’s wounds when she was alone and reeking of infection? It never once occurred to her that `Io would deny her, and so she stretched her fox-fine muzzle forward with reckless trust and pillowed her chin on the sleek, black-stockinged forelegs. A soft whine stirred in her throat, but even she didn’t know its origin; she merely wanted the other female to be happy here — happy enough to stay. “`Io,” she breathed, tilting her head so her cheek lay flush against the woman’s carpi, licking affectionately at the tops of her toes. “Safe. Friend?” She nestled even closer. “Stay?”

Reigi did not know why she loved the island wolves so much.  Rarely had she felt so posessive over the members of Bearclaw.  But as she met each of them, they filled a room in her heart -- Coelacanth and her Snowbear, Moorhen, Driftwood, Komodo.  She rested her head gently next to the atramentous sheepdog's, breathing in her berry and saltscent.

She did not have the words to share how much she had built up Coelacanth's image in her mind's eye and for the first time since she arrived on the shimmering sands of Undersea's domain she truly lamented for it.  The winter raven was only able to form images in her head and to her the tiny Gronendael was poetry in motion.  She wanted to tell the sheepdog how much she loved her, how the way she moved reminded her of the wheeling gulls of the island's namesake, how the way she whispered when she spoke reminded her of the rustling of the leaves.  How the twinkling in her infinitely expressive eyes reminded her of, S-Starshine.

Heat crept into her cheeks and her eyes flit across the open waters. Starshine paled in comparison when the woman had such eloquent titles and names -- Aralez, Coelacanth  -- but she had raked the bottom of her heart to find it.

"Stay?"  Coelacanth's 'Io raised her head and cocked it to the side, her ears splayed in confusion.  She nosed the slope of the inkdog's fine cheekbone and closed her eyes.  For — for all time.  Always.

“S-Starshine.”

It was too early in the evening for stargazing, but Coelacanth lifted her finely drawn skull and tipped it skyward, thinking of Kirynnae, the grand matriarch, weaver of stories — of Kailani, the Seabird, named for the sea and the sky — of Olive, the sidereal saronide, immaculate and untamable. The Cortens were voyagers, ocean-enamored and ever-wandering, and she possessed her own measure of wanderlust — but this was home, now. She drew in a breath so deep her concave flanks quavered with it before allowing it to fall shakily from her fox-fine muzzle in a deep sigh.

In the wake of what had happened with Komodo and Aditya, Seelie’s heart was too heavy to dance; but she cradled the name with a swanlike crane of her neck, folding in on herself as if by so doing, she could imprint its sibilant syllables upon her own heart. Starshine. Neptune eyes fluttered closed as `Io’s button nose traced the Aralez’s cheekbone. She could not trust the uniquely-painted female’s vow — she was ingenuous no longer and had learned the hard way that very few things were everlasting — but she appreciated that `Io wanted to make such a promise.

“Hurry,” she commented, “`Io, `Io guppy, Maegi.” After a beat, one tufted ear fanned out and to the side in indecision; her cerulean eyes opened and she looked curiously at the winter raven. “Worry,” she clarified in a sheepish whisper, ducking her head in embarrassment. She was worried about the trio, and about Poppy, too. A soft whine stirred in her hollow throat.

She watched with intensity as Coelacanth accepted her name, drawing her chin close to her chest as if she were placing it in her heart.  It made the nameless woman — 'Io — feel good about herself.  She never wanted to let it go.

No.  Safe here.  Strong.  Have — have baby back in valley.  Worry for them.  She turned her head away, her ears flicked back against her skull.  Konnie safe.  Maegi safe.

“No,” `Io said, and Coelacanth, ever-sensitive to that word in particular, pricked her ears sharply and intently searched the black-masked wolf’s mismatched gaze. Had she said something wrong? Comprehension dawned within her Neptune eyes a moment later as the winter raven elaborated, and the glaze of panic faded, replaced at once with a sorrowful sort of compassion. It was quite distressing to learn that `Io’s guppy — Konnie — was not, in fact, the only child from her litter. Seelie didn’t like that the siblings had been separated, and her sympathies were heightened by how fiercely she missed Amoxtli. “Brrring,” she urged the other female gently, utterly unaware of the complications that made her suggestion nigh impossible. She believed erroneously that `Io was a single mother, and that the coupling-scent she’d detected the first time they’d met had been engendered by the puppies’ father. In an attempt to soothe and reassure, “Brrring, all safe,” she breathed. The sea was a bountiful provider, and the island was rife with warmblooded prey.

She drew her nose to her chest slowly and choked a sob.  How could she communicate that her children deserved a chance at a normal life — truly normal, without a retard for a mother?  How that although she desperately wanted to secure her children, it was not likely that she would be allowed?

From the beginning.  That's where she would start.  S-starshine want to know, why here?  Why Un-der-see?  The inkdog's compassionate cerulean gaze was ever-soft as she nodded for her black-masked raven to continue.

Her story began before even the Teekon Wilds, with the sting of abandonment from both her mother and her only littermate.  She detailed how her mother did not speak, and did not seem to respond to her children's cries.

Of Xan, and how he lured her to the valley with just an otter.  Of how she had met and loved Moorhen.  How she thought that finally, she had found somewhere she would be accepted for who she was.

And how that all came crashing down so fast — Alexander and Indra tucked away in the woods, how afterwards she claimed him and he snuck away with Laurel anyway.  How both girls seemed to hate that Reigi lived and breathed, and every incident that had carried out.  How she tried to extend an olive branch to those girls more than once and how they kept throwing it in her face.  How Xan punished her for trying -- how he never seemed to care for his wife's plight.

When her stunted words failed her she would gently play out the actions with Coelacanth, using herself as the aggressor and the inkdog as her unwitting victim.  She spoke more words in this single interaction than she ever had in her life, because if anyone were to understand her, it would be the inkstained empath.

She explained why she left, and why she had left her children behind, and when she had finished telling her story, she cried openly.  S-seelie, she gasped, quivering in the sands, Em — em I a retarded?

`Io’s Starshine listened and watched with rapt attention, tufted ears canted forward upon her gently sloping skull and brow just slightly furrowed with an expression of eloquent concern. She felt her kinship with the largely nonverbal female deepen at mention of her mother, but to have lost a relationship with her littermate in the same way? It was heartbreaking. She tried but could not fathom the thought of Amoxtli ever abandoning her — they were too close for that, no matter how much distance separated them now. Seelie’s loyalty to her twin was indelible and endless, and she was incapable of believing the feeling was anything but utterly reciprocal. A smile played about her lips at mention of Moorhen — her lamb! (she tried and failed to suppress a stab of possessiveness) — but her mirthful expression faded quickly with every new wound `Io opened for her inspection.

The selkie’s daughter was a healer, but not even she could mend wounds as deep and festering as these. She felt `Io’s pain as her own pain, her empathic nature borrowing and borrowing until she herself felt bruised and broken. The blue-black velveteen of her cheeks was damp with tears by the time the coal-pointed raven slammed to a stop and openly wept. At a loss, she shook her head. She parceled out her words with meticulous care. “I do not know this,” she admitted helplessly. “This warred. Word.” Despite the pain, both actual and borrowed, that pulled at every muscle, Seelie rose to her feet and stood protectively over her raven, preening at the soft fur between her ears. “Peace be, `Io,” she whispered softly, nibbling tenderly at one elongated pinna. “Good girl. Good mama.” If the word in question meant something bad, Seelie knew there was no way it could fit.

---

`Io seemed unable to reply with anything but the harsh wrack of her sobs, and the sheepdog kept a silent vigil as day turned to night and night turned to morning. She bathed the other female’s tearstained face and whispered kindnesses until the sun rose and they went their separate ways.